Let Detroit Keep Its Art

[Purveyor]

By the Editors - Dec 9, 2013

Like a mournful soul tune, news from Detroit seems to get worse with each verse. The latest is deeply dispiriting: The city may have to sell the artwork off the walls.

A federal judge ruled Dec. 3 that Detroit met the conditions for Chapter 9 bankruptcy. Now a question that’s been simmering for months is coming to a boil: Should the Detroit Institute of Arts -- one of the country’s finest art museums and perhaps the city’s greatest cultural asset -- sell some or all of its collection to satisfy creditors?

It’s a vexing question, but the answer is no. Not because the city isn’t desperate for cash (it is), or because selling its Van Goghs and Picassos wouldn’t raise a lot of money (it would). The best reason is that the art’s ultimate owners, the taxpayers of greater Detroit, don’t want to -- and the city’s most profound challenge is how to reinvent itself as a place where people actually want to live and work.

Detroit may yet be able to avoid this dreadful outcome. A federal mediator is overseeing negotiations with philanthropic groups to spin off the institute -- which is owned by the city but receives no money from it -- in return for donations totaling $500 million or so. But there’s no guarantee the talks will succeed.

So the grim accounting of Detroit’s civic jewels proceeds. Christie’s Inc. estimates that the roughly 2,800 artworks the city could feasibly sell might fetch from $452 million to $866 million. Such a one-time cash infusion could alleviate some of the city’s innumerable woes, from a $3.5 billion pension shortfall to deteriorating public services. But Detroit’s underlying problems -- a shrinking population, economic stagnation, poor governance -- would remain. So would most of the city’s $18 billion in long-term debt.

more...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-09/let-detroit-keep-its-art.html

[frazzled]

1. Yes.

It would be shortsighted to let this art go, and the bankruptcy judge hinted his skepticism of such a sale in his opinion the other week:

Judge Rhodes, in a brief mention of the institute by name, said that such a sale would not have helped Detroit avoid bankruptcy.

“A one-time infusion of cash by selling an asset,” he said, would have only delayed the city’s “inevitable financial failure” unless it could have also come up with a sustainable way to enhance income and reduce expenses. Judge Rhodes added that in considering selling assets, a city “must take extreme care that the asset is truly unnecessary in carrying out its mission.”

>

Michael G. Bennett, an associate professor of law at Northeastern University School of Law, who was in the courtroom during the ruling, said, “Judge Rhodes seemed to be saying something that amounted to a defense of the collection.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/04/us/fate-of-detroits-art-hangs-in-the-balance.html?_r=0

I do consider the collection, owned by the taxpayers, as an essential asset: if Detroit is to rebuild and attract businesses and residents in the future, when it emerges from this bankruptcy, it is amenities such as this world-class museum that will help to attract them. To destroy it is tantamount to saying you want to relegate Detroit to a second-class city with no ambitions and no future.

Disclosure: I've had the image and tag line "Save the Art" as my sign line for some time now, so I'm biased.

[broiles]

2. Let them eat art!